OPINION The Roberto Benigni Uproar
Why is Roberto Benigni a somewhat controversial figure in his native Italy?
Last Thursday, the Venice Film Festival announced one of its two Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement, to be handed out during this year’s edition (scheduled for September 1-11). Specifically, one of the two honorary prizes will go to Italian actor-director Roberto Benigni, best known internationally for the Oscar-winning Life Is Beautiful (1997). Within minutes, comments were abounding about how it was a bad choice, with some arguing he’s cinematically irrelevant for years (more on that later).
Other, however, were far more virulent, saying that honoring Benigni was tantamount to an insult to cinema, and such comments have become increasingly common on social media in Italy over the past few years, turning a once-beloved comedy author and performer into an enemy of sorts. And while I myself have plenty to say about recent things he’s done (his guest appearance at last year’s Sanremo music festival on Italian TV was a big bunch of whatever), I find such extreme reactions baffling.
Then again, it is not uncommon for someone to become the object of scorn once their cultural power starts to fade. In that sense, Benigni – erstwhile screen presence in films by Fellini and Jim Jarmusch, among others – set himself up for punchline status when he won at the Oscars, his acrobatics becoming an inside joke the following year (when he arrived on stage to announce the Best Actress award, host Billy Crystal showed up behind him with a large butterfly net to contain him).
Following that triumph, the actor-director set out to adapt Pinocchio, and while the film was a commercial success in Italy, critical reactions were not as positive, mainly due to the baffling choice of Benigni casting himself, aged 49 at the time, as the title character. Additionally, attempts to replicate his previous Oscar success backfired in most spectacular fashion, as he instead received the Razzie Award for Worst Actor (shared with Breckin Meyer, who voiced Pinocchio in the English-language dub).
The filmmaker kept it smaller scale for his next project, The Tiger and the Snow, which came out in late 2005 and remains his last film to date. Since then, he has primarily toured Italy with readings of Dante’s Divine Comedy, expanding his repertoire in recent years to include other texts such as the Italian national anthem. On the film side, he appeared in Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love (for my money, Allen’s worst movie), playing a “typical Roman citizen” per the narration (Benigni is famously Tuscan), and portrayed Geppetto in another version of Pinocchio, this time directed by Matteo Garrone.
Some of Benigni’s detractors lament the loss of edge in his work, his persona having considerably mellowed over the years. Others still hold a grudge over Life Is Beautiful, something I first witnessed at the 2016 Rome Film Fest, at the press screening for the documentary The Last Laugh. The film, which analyzes whether it’s admissible to joke about certain topics, first and foremost the Holocaust, shows a clip of Benigni’s work, followed by a snippet of interview footage of Mel Brooks, who deems it “the worst movie ever made”. This remark drew widespread applause during the screening.
Chief among the complaints surrounding that film is one that got parroted last week as well, namely Benigni’s perceived dismissal of historical events by depicting the Americans as the liberators of death camps, when most of them, especially Auschwitz, were actually liberated by the Soviets. Except, of course, US troops did liberate some of the camps (American filmmaker George Stevens filmed one of them as part of his job of documenting the war effort), and nowhere in the film is it stated that the characters were taken to Auschwitz, as the camp remains unnamed throughout.
What the detractors probably also failed to pay attention to is the practical reason behind the choice of bestowing the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement upon Benigni: assuming the Venice Film Festival will take place as a physical event, the same way it did last year, restrictions will most likely still be implemented. As such, it’s a safer bet to invite special guests who are based in Europe, while still having an international profile that will justify coverage by non-Italian outlets.
Benigni fits the bill, as he is arguably the biggest Italian movie star on a global level, alongside Sophia Loren. Case in point, the marketing for Garrone’s Pinocchio: while the director and the actor were equally important, in terms of marketing, in European countries (Garrone being known for Gomorra and Dogman), the US advertising was primarily about Benigni alone, to the extent that more than one of my American Twitter friends were wondering why he’d been allowed to make another version, thinking he was also the director.
And of course, while there is now some evidence to the fact that not all publicity is necessarily good, the outrage will most likely not affect Benigni’s upcoming stay on the Lido. If anything, the people calling for his head on a platter (figuratively speaking) will be on the lookout for all articles covering the ceremony and related press conference, thus bringing even more attention to someone who, in their mind, doesn’t deserve any. At the end of the day, he will have the last laugh.